1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an electronic system and method for storing and retrieving information representing a multiplicity of video image frames. More particularly, it relates to such a system and method in which a data processing operation is not required to store the video image frames and to retrieve them for display in either their full size or as a set of reduced-size images displayed together, such as for browsing and selection. Most especially, it relates to such a system and method providing visual and electronic color comparison and an easy to use control system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Systems called still stores for storing and retrieving a multiplicity of single frame still images to and from, for example, disk drives, are known in the art. For example, such systems are disclosed in Taylor et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,302,776, issued Nov. 24, 1981 and Beaulier, U.S. Pat. No. 4,821,121, issued Apr. 11, 1989. In the use of such systems, it is common to browse through the stored images in order to select a particular image for further processing. When making such a selection, it is highly desirable to show a number, for example, sixteen of the images simultaneously to allow side-by-side comparison of them.
In the still store as described by Taylor et al., when a user wants to change the size of stored full size images to allow their display as an array of reduced size images, an image processor must process the image data after retrieving it from disk storage to generate the reduced size images. Taylor et al. were able to reduce system complexity over prior still store systems in which the image processing was carried out in real video time by doing the image processing in non-real time. However, the necessity to carry out such image processing whenever simultaneous display of reduced size images was desired means that a substantial system complexity is still required.
In the still store described by Beaulier, the need to carry out processing of the image data each time for simultaneous display of reduced size images is eliminated by carrying out the image processing for size reduction on each full size image prior to storing the full size image for the first time. The reduced and full size images are then stored together on the disk storage for later accessing. Another system in which both full size images and reduced size images are stored is disclosed in Belmares-Sarabia et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,763,186, issued Aug. 9, 1988. However, this approach does not eliminate all image data processing for reduced size image display, and it also requires the storage of additional information on the disk.